Put a slightly sorted order to specific Types of Construction Bot Ghost Requests

[GregoriusT]

Yesterday I upgraded all my non-Outpost Red Belts to Blue Belts using Bots, and I stumbled upon some Issues, while waiting for the gigantic request to finish.
Also last year I had the Issue of Bots trying to place something where a Deconstruction Marker was placed, with no other Bots left to decon the marked thing (I should mention it was Kovarexes Mini Compilatrons, so those might have been the Issue), so this can be a solution for that Problem too if it exists.

This is why I suggest an execution Order for Construction Bots based on what type of Request it is.

1. Remove everything marked for Deconstruction first.
2. Place Ghosts afterwards.
3. Try to do the Upgrade Planner changes last.

Why this order? When I wanted to place new Blue Belts, I had to place Ghosts since I cant handcraft them, but said Ghosts were never fulfilled because the Bots rather upgraded one of the thousands of Belts that where already existing (there was an obvious shortage on Blue Belts ofcourse). So I was forced to first place red Belts and once they were placed I had to upgrade-planner them to Blue Belts, since Ghosts cant be upgraded (the Ghosts are replaced, not Circle-Mark-Upgraded like existing Stuff, which does make sense ofcourse).

The un-upgraded Red Belts were still functional, so it would make much more sense to place the Blue Belt Ghosts than to upgrade the Red Belts.

Ofcourse Bots should still be able to skip Requests that can't be fulfilled yet, even if that violates the Category based order of execution.

[Deadlock989]

When I wanted to place new Blue Belts, I had to place Ghosts since I cant handcraft them

What?

Sounds to me like a classic case of user error. You issued far too many orders for the supplies available. No amount of tinkering with build order is going to solve that.

[Nemo4809]

You issued far too many orders for the supplies available.

As he mentioned, he was doing a mass upgrading to blue belts. Shortage is inevitable. No one is going to stock up blue belts for an upgrade. They just let their factory slowly produce as needed.

[Deadlock989]

mass upgrading

Simple. Don't do that.

Bots are stupid. They do stupid things if told to do stupid things. The reason they are stupid is because that is best for game performance. Solution: don't tell them to do stupid things. Learn to play smarter.

Of course, some players will always want every entity in the game to guess at their intentions and have their runtime hobbled by curlicues and exceptions, to make things as trivial as possible, because if something doesn't work as expected, the problem is clearly with the game and not their expectations.

No one is going to stock up blue belts for an upgrade.

Wrong again. In my last big game that ended up at about 2.5 rockets per minute, when I was shifting a 32-station smelting centre that produced 32 blue belts worth of metal plates from red to blue, I made roughly enough blue belts before I issued any upgrade orders. Because that seemed like the sensible thing to do. Nor did I issue the entire upgrade on the square kilometres of turf involved all at once: ditto. I did it section by section so that orders weren't left hanging.

[GregoriusT]

No amount of tinkering with build order is going to solve that.

Having 3 different queues for Bots instead of dumping all in the same queue would actually fix it. The Bots would still be just as stupid when it comes to finding what to build, which is supposedly not harming performance.

Btw does it make sense that a Deconstruction and an Upgrade Marker can be placed on the same Tile? This seems like bug-ish to me. I think I should report that too once I test it out on the 0.18 Multiplayer Server I play on.

[Nemo4809]

Simple. Don't do that.

Automation is the name of the game. Just highlight all that need to be upgraded and let the bots take care of it, is the way it should be.

Remember, the bots exist to reduce the tedium of building. Instead of placing one item at a time by hand, you can place a blueprint and let the bots handle the rest. Same with the upgrade planner IMHO. Instead of upgrading piece by piece, just highlight the whole thing and have the bots handle it.

Of course, some players will always want every entity in the game to guess at their intentions and have their runtime hobbled by curlicues and exceptions, to make things as trivial as possible, because if something doesn't work as expected, the problem is clearly with the game and not their expectations.

Hyperbole much?

I don't know the cost of what the OP is asking for - and I doubt you do either. Let the developers decide if it's worth it.

Wrong again. In my last big game that ended up at about 2.5 rockets per minute, when I was shifting a 32-station smelting centre that produced 32 blue belts worth of metal plates from red to blue, I made roughly enough blue belts before I issued any upgrade orders. Because that seemed like the sensible thing to do. Nor did I issue the entire upgrade on the square kilometres of turf involved all at once: ditto. I did it section by section so that orders weren't left hanging.

Err ... building a massive production line for a one time upgrade seem like a waste of time.

[Nemo4809]

Having 3 different queues for Bots instead of dumping all in the same queue would actually fix it.

That might not help frankly. You can still end up with a placement coming before deconstruction - unless you refuse to do any placement at all until the deconstruction queue clears but that would be very inefficient.

As for having to place ghost, one way around it is to have logistic bots bring you belts (I believe the player has priority here) with your roboport turned off - so your construction bots don't beeline for the nearest unassigned upgrade spot to use the belt. Then head to where you want to build and turn back on your roboport - hopefully it isn't close to where the upgrades are happening.

[Deadlock989]

Err ... building a massive production line for a one time upgrade seem like a waste of time.

Four assembling machines. Yeah, massive.

I wonder if the developers of Starcraft got this kind of thing. "I plonked down three hundred Nexuses without thinking and now my probes don't go to the right ones, please fix."

[GregoriusT]

You can still end up with a placement coming before deconstruction - unless you refuse to do any placement at all until the deconstruction queue clears but that would be very inefficient.

As i said, it should ofcourse skip when there is something unfulfillable and proceed with the fulfillable requests. This isn't supposed to be an ironclad order of execution, it's more of a "please try to do things in order" to make the Conbots run the Factory in a smoother more sensical pattern. This could also be useful if you only have a dozen Bots to do a thousand requests, which can happen earlygame when you didn't put a Bot Production Factory yet.

As for having to place ghost, one way around it is to have logistic bots bring you belts (I believe the player has priority here) with your roboport turned off - so your construction bots don't beeline for the nearest unassigned upgrade spot to use the belt. Then head to where you want to build and turn back on your roboport - hopefully it isn't close to where the upgrades are happening.

Yeah that is what I ended up doing in the end. But isn't there a Mod or Scenario that removes the Player Character? Wouldn't that make this specific case impossible?

[Oktokolo]

I wonder if the developers of Starcraft got this kind of thing. "I plonked down three hundred Nexuses without thinking and now my probes don't go to the right ones, please fix."

Last time i used blueprints and bots in Starcraft i got disqualified for cheating.
Starcraft is all about APM and doing manually while Factorio is all about being a lazy bastard and letting machines do all the work - to the point that there literally is an achievement called "lazy bastard" rewarding you for refraining from handcrafting...

Ofcourse Bots should still be able to skip Requests that can't be fulfilled yet, even if that violates the Category based order of execution.

Having construction bots actually do construction work as it becomes possible to do so is a pretty normal thing to want. You are not the first who stumbled upon that behaviour. The suggestion is definitely legit.
But bots will not get better. They could get less work-shy for some performance cost (obvious but slow implementation: One build queue per prototype).
They just won't. That is what the devs communicated multiple times.
So do your upgrades (or pavement jobs) in steps or suffer from the construction bot union strikes.

[Deadlock989]

Factorio is all about being a lazy bastard

Clearly we're playing different games.

[Nemo4809]

Err ... building a massive production line for a one time upgrade seem like a waste of time.

Four assembling machines. Yeah, massive.

I wonder if the developers of Starcraft got this kind of thing. "I plonked down three hundred Nexuses without thinking and now my probes don't go to the right ones, please fix."

The 4 machines have to be fed - with lubricant no less. How many iron gear machines will you need to feed those 4? Those have to be fed in turn. You would also want to feed the 4 with deconstructed reds to recycle so a logistic chest has to fit in somewhere.

Although I suppose I could just make a bot only set up to manufacture all the belts ... that would be easy to duplicate. Still have to set up additional roboports to make sure they don’t bottleneck from charging though.

All in all, you underestimate how lazy I am. LOL

[Deadlock989]

The 4 machines have to be fed - with lubricant no less. How many iron gear machines will you need to feed those 4? etc. etc.

So what? You're making all those things anyway. Are you complaining now about having to actually make the belts? What has that got to do with the thread? The point was that I didn't issue thousands of mixed construction and upgrade orders before I had the necessary items to fulfil them. Because that's the better way of doing it. I didn't issue thousands of inefficient commands and then write to the devs to ask them to change the game to suit me issuing thousands of inefficient commands. Just like I don't build rail set-ups that result in herds of trains converging on the same place - any more. I used to, then I got better.

[Oktokolo]

Clearly we're playing different games.

Obviously, as there is no Vespene gas in my game.

[Deadlock989]

Obviously, as there is no Vespene gas in my game.

Go and look up "analogy" in a dictionary and then come back and try a third time to be clever.

We are seven months from 1.0 release and the chances of any of this kind of hand-holding press-to-win mechanics going into the code now are zero, and they weren't ever high in the first place. Nothing game-changing has been added since priority splitters. It's just all polish from here on. They couldn't fix players being dumb even if they wanted to. That's up to them.

[GregoriusT]

Nothing game-changing has been added since priority splitters. It's just all polish from here on. They couldn't fix players being dumb even if they wanted to. That's up to them.

Wow, way to be toxic about a simple Suggestion, geez. You are making it hard for everyone to stay constructive.

First of all, preventing mixing Fluids is definitely a "fix players being dumb" thing and a way more major change than priority Splitters.

And second, I am not asking for stuff like Concreting or Landfilling the World, to be a separate Task. I am asking for 3 entirely different things to be treated different and if possible with an order, which by the way could actually be a performance increase (at least the deconstruction before construction/upgrading could be an improvement for cut/paste Situations).

Remember, the Upgrade Planner, another major addition since Priority Splitters, is new and could need better overall treatment.

[Deadlock989]

Or you could just not give bots bad instructions.

I mean, the arrogance of thinking you've just thought of a performance increase that has gone unnoticed by every professional that worked on the game for the last five years.

It would be easier for everyone involved if you changed the way you play to a better way, rather than making everyone else change their game to suit you.

Sorry if it's "toxic" to be pointing these home truths out.

I mean, you're like the fiftieth person to be ignored with these requests. viewtopic.php?f=80&t=18093

PS. Common nouns aren't capitalised in typical English, it makes your posts sound like they're being read from a scroll written by a fourth century monk.

[GregoriusT]

Or you could just not give bots bad instructions.

I mean, the arrogance of thinking you've just thought of a performance increase that has gone unnoticed by every professional that worked on the game for the last five years.

Or the arrogance of shutting down everyone who mentions something to think about, just because the thing is already super good?

An example would be that Factorio runs on the Dataflow Pattern, you know what's generally even more performant than that? An Entity Component System. Sure it is way too late to switch from one to the other, nor would I plan to work on Factorio, because I want to do my own Stuff (which this damn addicting Game distracts me from), but don't assume people don't know stuff about performance (or lack thereof), especially with a Minecraft Modding background where everything is a broken clusterfuck, and I optimized things in that based purely on experience, reverse engineering and intuition, simply to make my Mod somewhat performant compared to the garbage around it. Nothing truly professional, but still a programming feat in on itself.
What did I actually want to say here?, Oh right there is always a better way, and if you are not willing to find it, then you will have to do compromises, and most times those are worse for everyone involved.

P.S. in hindsight I should not have said Minecraft Modding background, simply because I know 95% of Minecraft Modders are super incompetent, with the remaining 5% at least trying to do their best...

It would be easier for everyone involved if you changed the way you play to a better way, rather than making everyone else change their game to suit you.

Sorry if it's "toxic" to be pointing these home truths out.

If it is for the purpose of shutting someone down who just posted an IDEA to think about and not a DEMAND, then yes that is toxic and quite destructive.
Not everyone who posts Ideas is a naive-ling who needs their dreams shot by some random know-it-all, some people post Ideas to make everything better for everyone at hopefully no performance cost compared to the status quo.

I mean, you're like the fiftieth person to be ignored with these requests. viewtopic.php?f=80&t=18093

And you linked a List of Ideas which are related to the Robot Network, yet different from my Idea.

PS. Common nouns aren't capitalised in typical English, it makes your posts sound like they're being read from a scroll written by a fourth century monk.

Well I'm german, so guess what got mixed up, when it comes to capitalizing common Nouns. And yes I am not even consistent with capitalization. That is just the broken and slightly OCD way how I ended up learning the English Language.

Anyways, I hate how i have to reply to everything noteworthy...

[Oktokolo]

Go and look up "analogy" in a dictionary and then come back and try a third time to be clever.

Starcraft has entirely different mechanics and goals. It does not even has the megabases (nor would it make sense for it to have them) where you could end up upgrading thousands of entities - it does not even has thousands of entities. It has a unit limit and fixed sized maps with fixed amounts of resources. Where Starcraft is a pure RTS, Factoprio is a sandbox game disguised as an RTS.
Starcraft would not be a better game if it had items, belts, trains, inserters, and production chains longer than 2 (minearal + gas to unit, unit mutates to other unit). It would not be a better game if it had infinite space and resources.
Factorio would be a worse game if it would not have that things.

That said: Starcraft bots actually change resource patches when their originally assigned patch is occupied...

[Deadlock989]

Or the arrogance of shutting down everyone

But I don't shut down everyone. Just the really, really bad ideas, and then I'd estimate only about 1% of those.

Just give your bots clever things to do instead of gormlessly selecting three different kinds of job at once that are way too large for them to fulfil with resources you don't have. Problem solved. You'd think someone who single-handedly fixed Minecraft would understand that.

Starcraft has entirely different mechanics and goals.

No, really? Tell us more.